Skulls
by hancaesar
Summary: Mutants all but decimated, the final remnants struggle to survive in an inhospitable world. Those who survive must rely on one another to do so, and when Logan comes to Landra with a desperate plea to keep Charles's abilities at bay, she realises it's time. It's time to face the past.
1. Chapter 1

A metallic, raspy hum - like the devil whispering - sighs softly in my ear. An impatient ticking accompanies it, also. My eye cracks open, the banal beige decor and walls (lined with a khaki green) greeting me. I had known this room for a very small amount of time, but it is already beginning to feel confining. 

It traps me, and I feel desperate to escape the room that has borne witness to my anxious and worrisome hand-wringing to peeking repeatedly out the window for a threat that never comes.

Am I in my own personal hell?

No.

I'm in El Paso.

I hastily ready myself, realising half the afternoon has been lost to catching up on sleep. Squinting in the sudden harsh light, I slam the motel door closed and cling to the small bag of possessions that remain with me.

The ranch-themed bar across the street calls my name, and I scurry inside to avoid the sun's accusing and all-knowing gaze.

Exchanging crumpled, disfigured notes I accept in return a tall glass of beer. It feels good in my hand, even as the condensation trails over my fingers. My faithful Nokia buzzes, and fishing it out I see a message on its screen.

' **Nearly there.'**

My stomach drops, and it's replaced with a fast-thundering drum as anxiety bends my brain. _Nearly there._ What's the definition of nearly there? It varies from person to person. It could be twenty minutes; it could be ten. Maybe even five.

I slip from the peeling barstool, relocating to a dust-coated window overlooking the street and motel. I wait. So far, nothing but heat and tumbleweed. My knee jiggles nervously and I know it's bothering the silent customers around me - I can tell from the pointed coughs and shifting in chairs. Some even glare.

I don't care. My fears overcome me, and my knee has taken a new, neurotic life of its own.

A family of four exit the room next to mine - 755 - and the deep lines adorning the parents' faces painting a portrait; a life of worry, frowning over unachievable bills and late-night pacing. The well-fed frames of their son and daughter contrast with the parents' overly defined and thin shapes adds sacrificed meals to their hardships.

Shifty looks and tense body language slots the final piece into place in my idle profile. Immigrants. Illegal.

I see them so clearly now, so clearly in fact I almost think I should invite them for a drink; like old friends that stumbled upon one another accidentally while both do equally shady business deals.

Imagination ceases as my train of thought is interrupted by a chair being dragged along the scuffed floorboards, a heavy bottomed glass firmly placed down on the table in musical unison.

The chair and glass's owner are the cause of my discomfort. I hadn't seen him in almost ten years, and I had long dreaded the encounter. But we have no choice now - there's too little of us left to cherry pick our allies. My new companion has not aged well. Deep crow's feet and scars surrounds his hazel eyes. Dark drooping eye bags don't help his haggard appearance as they provide more information than he wants; too much booze! Let me sleep!

But no. He can't sleep.

"Logan."

This name, this declaration, seems wrong. It's wrong and we both know it - the brief flush of embarrassment staining my face pink tells him, and his eyes flicker to the table. Logan is the name of another man, someone we knew a long time ago. This Logan - the alien - releases a long and tired sigh.

"Lana."

"It's been a long time." I note slowly, fingertips brushing the rim of my glass as we sit together - the family in their destructive pinto disappearing out of my world and mind.

"I thought you wanted it that way," Logan points out, leaning back in his chair. His peppered beard (with more grey than black, now) straggly and hides his age. The wear and tear hidden underneath the facial hair, but the mental exhaustion in his eyes is too hard to masquerade. I've seen it in my own. "Or am I wrong?"

I pause. He's not wrong, and I'm ashamed of myself until a strong surge of defensiveness looms. I had to protect myself; I would've died like the rest.

"No. You're not wrong, not at all. But I had to protect myself. You fuckin well know that. If it wasn't X's off the wall brain melting mine you know, _you know_ ," I hiss, leaning close to avoid being overheard. His eyes bore into my face. "You know they kill us. They kill our kind an-and harvest us to make themselves superior."

"Ubermensch, I thought your old man hated that kinda stuff?" Logan asks dryly, raising a bushy and scarred eyebrow as I feel my face contort into a nasty scowl. "Or was it the people who adopted it?"

"Shut up."

My snapping silences him. A trembling hand lifts the glass to his lips, and for a moment I worry he's going to spill his drink. He doesn't. He's adapted to his body's tremors now.

"What do you want, Logan?" I ask the question that has been burning my tongue. His sudden reappearance, the sudden desperation to find me had been curious immediately - but I still didn't know.

"He's dying. Xavier. His brain, you said so...it kills people. Fuck, Lana...you remember. The day it happened. When he killed - them." Logan says softly, his eyes growing dark and my face softens. I want to hold his hand, like we did a lifetime ago, but I realise now he'd sooner slap me away.

"I was there, and I said to you; get the helmet. The helmet, Logan, that's our chance."

"We don't have that option anymore. Instead, I need you, Lana. Please. Just...fucking help me goddammit," Logan pleads. I can tell from how his face grimaces, I really am the final option. He really has no other choice. Guilt contorts my stomach. I'm not who I used to be. "I couldn't find him. I couldn't find Erik and he has the helmet."

"How have you been controlling them?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.

"Drugs, mostly," Logan reveals to me. "But I can't keep getting shit under the counter. We need what you can do."

"What I used to do,"

"No, what you _do._ "

I release a breath, and as we head into the sun, I realise I'm kissing goodbye my final seconds of freedom; freedom to be selfish, and to mind myself alone.

I'm relinquishing my own safety.


	2. Chapter 2

" _Landra," He called to her. "Es gibt die Leute hier, um dich zu sehen."_

 _She walks down the long, winding staircase in a flood of light, stained from the grimy window that hovers above the landing. Her heart is tight and painful – breathing is difficult. Her young mind has already jumped to an ugly conclusion, that they have finally found her at the reaper has finally come to knock on her door._

 _It is time to go._

" _Landra,"_

 _She holds her breath as the final step looms, and her feet touch the ground. In a strange second of perplexed terror, she realises that no hands are rushing to grip her; no hands rushing to drag her away._

" _Hello,"_

 _She tears her eyes from the hardwood floor to daringly look up at the stranger's voice. She finds a welcoming man, with wise eyes examining her, and a kind gentle expression. He extends a hand for her to shake. She grudgingly accepts._

 _Her guardian is behind him, as Landra shakes hands with her future._

" _My name is Charles Xavier, Landra," Her future greets. "It's very nice to meet you."_

"Landra!"

I sit forward abruptly as his voice rips me from the dream, from my memories, and with terror written across my face I realise we're somewhere totally alien. A landscape I am a stranger in.

"Wake up. We're here," Logan says through the open car window, and I stumble on asleep legs from the vehicle.

My eyes strain in the bright and intrusive sunlight, as I gaze across the expansive property in Mexico to see the dusty sliver of forgotten wasteland that the last dregs have been left to inhabit – forgotten by time itself, with only the sun as watchman over their laboured existences.

It's a far cry from the lush grasses and deep, rich forests of Westchester.

I follow Logan in his tattered suit to presumably the main house (a shack that once stood as a warehouse) to find another body inside. I recoil as I find the face of Caliban sitting amongst the rags and rusted fixtures, the albino harbinger of death.

"What the hell is this sack of crap doing here?" I demand with an aggressive snap, Caliban recoiling from my anger. It brings an unnerving sense of glee that despite any fall from grace I might have endured, my presence still instructs a reaction.

"He's taking care of Charles," Logan explains, dumping a small plastic bag. Caliban examines it unhappily.

"He's taking care of Charles? No wonder you're so desperate for me," I scoff as Caliban eyes me worriedly with those large egg-yolk coloured eyes of his.

"Caliban can't keep the seizures away with just this," The albino mutant murmurs, examining the dosage Logan provided – the latter of which makes an impatient and angry grunt.

"It's all I can get, okay? It's not like I was in the position to argue with the guy,"

At this rate, we aren't in the position to argue with anyone; let alone people willing to help.

"Where is he, anyway?" I ask to silence, as Caliban and Logan look at one another. An icy bead of sweat rolls down my spine, despite the intense heat – is Charles really that bad?

I take the food tray and sedatives from Caliban's hands, suppressing a shiver at the thought, _'How many of us have you led them to? Let them kill?'_

Logan unlocks the overturned water tower, its rusted shell rattling in the stiff desert breeze as I step inside the cool, sheltered interior.

It smells like death; stale air.

"Is…is it you?" A voice, like Marley's ghost, rattles inside the cylinder as my eyes traverse over the cluttered potted plants – the only source of colour in this godforsaken dust bowl – and the ancient wheelchair on its side, before resting on the hospital gurney.

There he lies like a corpse positioned for their wake and my mind is cast back to the final step on my childhood staircase, the point of no return, before boldly stepping toward him.

I do not recognise him all that much, his once recognisable face aged by sagging flesh and peppered with white stubble. Even his clothes, dirty and stained, betray the man he once was.

Is the mansion like him, in this state? Left to ruin, with only the ivy that cling to its hollow corpse, like Logan and I cling to Charles for familiarity, to remember it by?

"Who are you?" He asks of me, bleary eyes investigating my face gingerly. My chest tightens, the acid in my gut churning.

"You know damn well who she is," Logan says impatiently, snatching the medication from the tray. He pulls on dollar store glasses, the tag swinging from the left arm, and Charles smiles charmingly at me in a dazed sort of way that only those truly wandering can muster.

"Don't they make him look young?"

I attempt a smile of confirmation, but it hurts my cheeks.

Logan does his part with the drugs and the tray Caliban pushed into my hands is up next. It's laden with mushy food, potatoes and overly boiled string beans, but food is food I suppose as Charles sits up in anticipation (or more, because Logan makes him).

"I recognise your face," He continues to try and place me in the jumbled web of memories he calls his mind, and I feel his fingers inside my brain trying to pick it apart; remember any trace of himself inside me. He snags on something. "Where is he? Where is Erik?"

"I don't know," I admit softly, skewering a bean and positioning the fork to his mouth expectantly. Charles grows distressed at my ignorance, or rather frustrated at the fact he just _can't_ remember and slaps the cutlery violently from my hand. It ricochets, a sharp metallic clang, and I wince.

"You're a liar, a fucking liar like your father, Landra," Charles abuses me and his face twists into a scowl of contempt. The moment he recalls who I am, he finds it fit to belittle me.

"Hey! Knock it off," Logan warns him, Charles scoffing something nasty and unintelligible before crossing his arms petulantly.

I'm shaken, I can't deny that, and I overthink the brief encounter while sitting in the main warehouse in darkness and shielded from the unwelcome sun. Beside me, Caliban cleans with a filthy rag. I can feel his yolk eyes on the back of my skull.

"You know he's buying a boat," Caliban tells me. I focus on my watery soup and stale bread. He neurotically shifts on his feet. "He'll leave us here, take the old man and go."

I pick at the hard bread in my hands.

"I'd cut my losses and go," Caliban advises, his mouth close to my ear as I look boldly at him. He steps abruptly back.

"Then why don't you? Take your own advice," I challenge. He pauses, and I can practically see the cogs in his head turning at the realisation he has no real excuse for staying when there's so much risk attached. "That's what I thought."

Just like me, just like Logan and Charles, Caliban is desperate to remain amongst his own kind. Or at least what's left of it, as I hear Logan's tires screeching away from our little grubby sanctuary.

With the sound of receding wheels, an uneasy sensation rests on my shoulders, as I feel foreboding doom descend on us.


End file.
